MEMORY is unkind to many, but to Max Schmeling more than most. The athletic skills of Germany’s only ever world heavyweight boxing champion were matched by his lifelong generosity. But outside Germany, he is remembered mainly as a symbol of Nazism for his two fights with an American boxer, Joe Louis. The first, which he won in 1936, warmed the cold heart of Hitler, who found him a perfect propaganda tool, an Aryan superman. In the second fight, Louis flattened Schmeling in just over two minutes, and the former world champion fell in the Nazis’ esteem as quickly as he had risen. Later he would give thanks for losing that fight.

Maximilian Siegfried Adolph Otto Schmeling was born in Klein-Lucknow, in Upper Pomerania, in 1905, to a farmer’s daughter and a helmsman for the Hamburg-America sailing line. The quiet child joined a boxing club at 18, and won his first fight (and 80 reichsmarks) in 1924. He moved quickly through the ranks and weight classes, and in 1930 he became world heavyweight champion, beating Jack Sharkey by disqualification. He lost the title to Sharkey in 1932.

His greatest victory came against Louis. The much younger American was undefeated and a heavy favourite. But Schmeling found gaps in his defences, knocking him out in the 12th round. Hitler was ecstatic, and invited Schmeling for coffee and crumbcake. But the fighter would not be a Nazi hero, turning down an honorary title of Sturmführer. He refused to fire his Jewish-American manager or divorce his Czech wife. In 1938, during the Kristallnacht pogroms across Germany, Schmeling hid two teenage sons of a Jewish friend in his hotel room for several days.

Schmeling’s defeat in the second bout with Louis saw him fall in Hitler’s estimation. His subsequent drafting into the Wehrmacht may have been a punishment. He was a paratrooper, and was injured badly on landing in a daring airborne attack on Crete. He left the army and began boxing again. During an exhibition fight in occupied Paris in 1944, he declined to give the Nazi salute when introduced, raising both fists instead.

A few more fights after the war earned him enough money first to start a farm and then to buy a Coca-Cola distributorship. He became wealthy again, and used his money to become one of Germany’s biggest philanthropists. His only child, a son, had died at seven months old, and children were frequent beneficiaries of his generosity. As was Joe Louis. The men became lifelong friends, and Schmeling often gave the down-and-out American money. He paid for Louis’s funeral in 1981.

In Germany Schmeling was a hero, but in the country where he won his greatest victory, he was remembered mainly as that Nazi. The two children he saved during Kristallnacht did not forget. Henri Lewin, who later became a wealthy hotelier in California, said ”If this is a Nazi, he’s a good Nazi, but I want you to know one thing—I wouldn’t be sitting here today if it wasn’t for this Nazi.” Well into his 90s, Schmeling loved to travel and talk boxing, but he declined to be recognised publicly by the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation for saving the Lewins’ lives. He was sent a certificate and a medal instead.

Max Schmeling, the German heavyweight champion, wrongly associated with Hitler’s regime during his legendary fights with Joe Louis, died in Germany at the age of 99.

His title and image were used as a propaganda tool by Adolf Hitler to demonstrate Aryan supremacy. But by all accounts, Schmeling conducted himself as a gentleman and sportsman. In fact, many years after the war it was revealed that he had risked his life by hiding two Jewish brothers during the pogrom known as ”Kristallnacht”, on November 1938.

Towards the end of the Second War World, Schmeling served in a parachute body to which he had been personally assigned by Hitler, in reprisal for his refusal to become a member of the Nazi party.

In 2003 the International Foundation Raoul Wallenberg gave him an award, and in response I had the honor of receiving a letter in which he expressed his appreciation.

During his lifetime he treasured camaraderie and friendship and, somehow, each of his ring opponents became his friend. He regularly and quietly gave the down-and-out Joe Louis gifts of money, and the friendship continued after death: Schmeling paid for the funeral.

Baruch Tenembaum

Translation: Nora Bellettieri

Remarkable that is – as Germany’s only world boxing heavyweight champion turns 98 on Sunday.

”I am not the youngest person,” says Schmeling, shrugging off his slower pace.

But Schmeling still has the same demeanour as in the past, the same gestures, expressions, laughs – not to mention his regular Wednesday card games.

The normal routine will apply on Sunday when his friends pay their respects at his home in Hollenstedt just outside Hamburg.

And as far as Schmeling is concerned, they will have to show up at least twice more.

”I would like to make the 100 years. I love life and want to see a lot more of it – although I can’t be as much part of it as in the past,” he says.

Schmeling has been out of boxing since 1948, when he lost in ten rounds to Reifdel Vogt, after winning 56 of his 70 professional bouts during his 24-year career.

Along with footballer Franz Beckenbauer he is Germany’s most respected sports icon – mainly for his world heavyweight titles in 1930 and 1931.

Schmeling made his professional debut in Dusseldorf in 1924, knocking out Hans Czapp in the sixth round, and when he won the European light-heavyweight title in 1927 it was the first bout broadcast live on German radio.

Schmeling became the first star of the new broadcast medium, with millions tuning in to hear commentaries.

In 1928, he captured the German heavyweight crown before deciding to go to the United States to further his career where on 28 November of the same year he knocked out Joe Monte in eight rounds.

Victories over high-ranking fighters such as Johnny Risko, known as the Cleveland Rubber Man, and Paolino Uzcudun earned him a shot at the heavyweight title, and on 12 June 1930 he entered the ring at the Yankee Stadium against Jack Sharkey for the vacant heavyweight title.

In the fourth round, Sharkey was disqualified for hitting low and Schmeling became the first European to win the world heavyweight title.

Schmeling successfully defended the title in Cleveland in 1931 against Young Stribling with a 15th-round technical knock out. It brought a rematch with Sharkey in New York on June 21, 1932, which the German lost on points to a split decision.

However, Schmeling’s worldwide fame came thanks to a non-title bout in 1936 against the formidable Joe Louis, at the time unbeaten.

Before a crowd of over 42,000 in New York’s Yankee Stadium, Schmeling had the 22-year-old Louis down in the fourth round before knocking him out in the 12th in what was considered, at the time, to be the sporting shock of the century.

Louis later won the heavyweight title and a rematch was fixed for 1938, and the ”Brown Bomber gained revenge by knocking out the German in 124 seconds of the first round.

Although Hitler never forgave him for refusing to join the Nazi Party, Schmeling was used as a propaganda tool by the regime which depicted the first win over Louis as a victory for ”Aryan supremacy”.

Cinemas showed the fight under the title, ”Max Schmeling’s victory – a German victory”.

As Germany’s best-known sportsman, he was also used by the Nazis to persuade the Americans to take part in the 1936 Berlin Olympics despite reservations over growing anti-Semitism in the country. Schmeling later expressed his regret at this saying he had been ”utterly naive”.

However the boxer resisted Nazi demands he separate from his Czech actress wife, Anny Ondran, or his Jewish manager in the U.S. Joe Jacobs and his many Jewish friends.

It also later emerged that Schmeling risked his own life by hiding two Jewish children during Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938 when thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses and homes in Germany were damaged in a pogrom, and that he helped Jews and dissidents escape deportation.

The 1938 episode recently led to a special honour from the ”International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation” (IRWF), named after the Swedish diplomat who tried to save as many Jewish lives as possible and then vanished at the end of World War II.

Schmeling was originally to receive the medal at the IRWF headquarters in Buenos Aires, but didn’t feel fit for the long trip and then also rejected a public ceremony in Germany.

That was also no surprise as the long-time owner of a drinks company has rarely appeared in public after the 1987 death of his wife.

© copyright 2003 Expatica Communications BV

Perhaps best remembered in the ring for his two fights with Joe Louis, heavyweight champion Max Schmeling remains unjustly associated with Nazi Germany and was unfairly depicted as a villain in the United States. His title and image were used as a propaganda tool by Adolf Hitler to demonstrate Aryan supremacy. But by all accounts, Schmeling conducted himself as a gentleman and sportsman.

In fact, many years later, it was revealed that Schmeling risked his own life by hiding Jewish children in his hotel room and helping them escape Germany.

Schmeling turned pro in Germany at the age of nineteen in 1924 and won the German light heavyweight title in 1926. He’d also won the European 175-pound title and German heavyweight crown before coming to the United States to fight. In New York, in 1929, Schmeling made his mark by defeating a pair of top heavyweights: Johnny Risko and Paolino Uzcudun. Those victories earned him a number-two ranking and a shot at the heavyweight title.

The liberal-minded Schmeling who had a Jewish manager, Max Jacobs, found himself unwittingly turned into a symbol of Nordic-Germanic race superiority following his sensational victory on 19 June 1936 over the black American heavyweight fighter Joe ‘Brown Bomber’ Louis, considered by many the greatest boxer at his weight in ring history. In Nazi Germany, this triumph –to Schmeling’s dismay- was presented in racial terms as a victory that proved Negro inferiority.

The return bout at the Yankee Stadium, held before a crowd of over 70,000 spectators on 22 June 1938, was more politically and racially charged than any previous encounter in heavyweight boxing history. Joe Louis was determined to vindicate not only himself but also the pride of America and the black people. Within two minutes and four seconds of the first round Schmeling had been knocked out after facing an onslaught of unrelenting savagery from the black American champion.

However, history will remember him for what he achieved outside rather than inside the ring. The story of Max Schmeling is the story of a hero, who during the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938, saved the lives of two young Jewish brothers named Lewin. A decent man in conflict with the Nazi regime and racial policies of Hitler’s Third Reich, and a man who demonstrated extraordinary generosity, righteousness and humanitarianism. Yet Schmeling never once revealed his heroism.

In an article, published in History Today, two professors at the University of Rhode Island, Robert Wiesbord and Norbert Heterich, tell how Schmeling agreed to hide the two teenage sons of a Jewish friend of his, David Lewin, during the awful time of Krystallnacht, November 1938 when Nazi pogroms against the Jews reached new heights.

He kept the Lewin boys, Henry and Werner, in his apartment at the Excelsior Hotel in Berlin, leaving word at the desk that he was ill and no one was to visit him. Later, when the rage of hate died down a little bit, did Schmeling help them flee the country to safety. They escaped and came to the United States where one of them, Henri Lewin, became a prominent hotel owner. This episode remained under shrouds until 1989, when Henry Lewin invited Schmeling to Las Vegas to thank him for saving his life. To this day, Henri Lewin believes that he and his brother owe their lives to Max Schmeling and he is convinced that Schmeling himself could have died for his humanitarian gesture.

After World War II -Hitler never forgave his refusal to join the Nazi party, had him drafted into the Paratroops and sent him on suicide missions- Schmeling fought five times and never made the top 10 again. He won a few fights but in May 1948 was beaten by another veteran, Walter Neusel, at Hamburg. His boxing career over -Schmeling won fifty-six and drew four of his seventy fights- the former German and world champion remained a popular and much respected figure not only in Germany but also in America. Awarded the Golden Ribbon of the German Sports Press Society, Schmeling became an honorary citizen of Los Angeles and in 1967 received the American Sports Oscar. In the same year he published his autobiography, Ich Boxte mich durchs Leben. In 1957 the ex champion purchased a Coca-Cola dealership in Hamburg-Wandsbek. He is known as one of the most generous philanthropists in Germany today.

Schmeling treasured camaraderie and friendship and, somehow, each of his ring opponents became his friend. He regularly and quietly gave the down-and-out Joe Louis gifts of money, and the friendship continued after death: Schmeling paid for the funeral.

El Chileno, digital interactive newspaper.

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